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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997896">merry christmas, i could care less</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep'>scarredsodeep</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Girl Out Boy [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fall Out Boy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bisexuals Exist, Depression, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Genderbending, Gift Giving, Happy Ending, Holidays, Lesbian Character, Nonbinary Character, Pre-Hiatus (Fall Out Boy), Tales from 2004, about being sad at the holidays when people want you to have holiday cheer, girl out boy, yule shoot your eye out</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:01:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,803</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27997896</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarredsodeep/pseuds/scarredsodeep</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All Pat wants for Christmas is to celebrate with her girlfriend. All Pete wants is not to let her down.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <i>we deserve better songs than any boy will ever write about us.</i></p>
<p>  <i>-jennifer hopper</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz, Peterick - Relationship</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Girl Out Boy [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/940746</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>33</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 2 weeks til christmas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/gifts">carbonbased000</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Being sad at the holidays is ho-ho-horrible but I think a lot of us struggle with it, especially this year. Here is a story about Pete being sad and her friends loving her anyway. Updates on Thursdays til Christmas is here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7yyXIHJIwfnOGwBlPqsRKz">jingle jams???</a></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The worst thing about the elf ears is what they do to her hair. Hair like Jo’s makes up its own damn mind, and at a certain point in her 10 hour North Pole shift, it’s unsalvageable. Like, not even a Christmas miracle sized can of hair spray could save her. </p>
<p>Jo’s mother would say the worst thing is the assault on her Judaism, probably. But elves aren’t necessarily incompatible with believing Jesus was just a guy, at least not in Jo’s book. Marshall Fields won’t let any of Santa’s Helpers wear religious iconography, so Jo’s Star of David hangs in her locker, twinkling on its silver chain with her regular human clothes, because it’s $10 an hour. Jo will sell out her entire identity for $10 an hour. Her last job was delivering Chinese food for $3 plus tips, and people feel empowered to greet delivery girls in wild and upsetting states of nudity, so. This gig is way better. Not that Dr. Mrs. Trohman was impressed. She’s too supportive to say it, but ‘you’d have more options if you went to college’ hangs in the air anyway, a Jedi mind trick of guilt.</p>
<p>The second worst thing about the elf gig is the total stripping of all dignity it entails. Jo is straight-up lying to her friends about it. “I got a job at the MAC counter,” she’s insisted a hundred times, leaving the apartment in head-to-toe black and glamorous eyeliner wings with her horrible curl-toed slippers shoved in a backpack. This is convincing exactly nobody, especially after she accidentally wore her ears home one day and then her dumb sort-of boyfriend Mark made some comment about how she puts the <em>ho, ho, ho</em> in Christmas with her striped stockings and jingle bells. </p>
<p>“You’re getting coal for Christmas,” she told him darkly, but the damage was already done. </p>
<p>“Are you going to tell Santa yourself?” Andy asked, all fluttering eyelash and innocence, flicking one of Jo’s prosthetic ear tips. “Does he hang out in the cosmetics department of Fields, JoJo? Is that what Mark means?”</p>
<p>Jo ripped the ears off and stuffed them in her hoodie pocket, which didn’t help her case. “I have no idea what Mark means. He’s barely coherent,” she sniffs proudly. “I am <em>very</em> good at makeup, just in case you weren’t aware. Those MAC girls are lucky to have me.”</p>
<p>Andy clearly didn’t buy it. Everyone knows Jo’s applied to the MAC counter like, one hundred times. And Mark’s got the most shit-eating grin of all time. She figures she’s got about two days of self-respect left before her friends ambush her at work and catch her in all her elf-y, frizzy glory.</p>
<p>But to tell you the truth, elf shame is the least of her problems. Patricia’s in full-on Bambi mode and Pete’s circling the drain of something bad, and she’s been working so much that they decorated the apartment without her, so of course Andy hung her stocking above the toilet. She’s got that familiar sinking feeling she gets right before she starts solving everybody else’s problems for them, with or without their help. Just because she doesn’t celebrate Christmas doesn’t mean she’s going to let her dumbass friends ruin it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s not very punk rock of her, but Pat loves Christmas. It was always such a magical time of year at her house. Her mom goes all-out on decorations, gets a tree that’s taller every year so sometimes it takes all 3 Stump kids to get the thing inside, bakes everything from gingerbread houses to figgy pudding, and in between that, they go ice skating in Millenium Park, her mom drinks too much glugwine at Christkindlmart, and they go see the holiday dioramas in the Fields windows all lit up at night. On Christmas eve, her mom drags everyone to church, but there’s this part where they pass out candles and turn out all the lights and everyone sings. Then there’s tinsel and popcorn strings and spiked hot cocoa and blazing hearthfires and how it feels to race down the stairs on Christmas mornings to all the presents heaped under the tree. Yeah. Pat loves every part of it.</p>
<p>And this year she’s not going. </p>
<p>Okay, that’s dramatic. Her and Pete are driving out to the burbs for Christmas dinner and seeing both families, they aren’t literally the couple embodiment of Ebeneezer Scrooge. But she’s a grown-up woman now, and she’s sleeping in her own bed on Christmas Eve with her own girlfriend, and opening presents in her own apartment with her own little family in the morning. It’s a chance to start their own traditions, to bake cookies together and eat too much pie and have a snowball fight in the living room and maybe, not that she’s expecting anything, Pete will make a secret plan to surprise her with ice skating too. It’s her first Christmas living with her girlfriend and her best friends, and she’s determined to make it the best one ever. All she needs is a little cooperation from Pete.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pete’s not feeling very cooperative.</p>
<p>How to describe Pete’s feeling? Like everyone else is singing along to a song on the radio but all she hears is static. Like her rosy-cheeked friends keep describing this awesome snowglobe they’re all in but Pete’s just trapped in a blizzard. Like the last fucking thing it’s possible to care about is the manufactured warm-and-fuzzies you’re expected to perform for no better reason than the calendar says this one shitty day out of all the other shitty days is Christmas.</p>
<p>“C’mon, no more laying around in the dark like the villain of a Disney Christmas special,” Andy announces on Pete’s day off, the one she is very much planning to spend facedown in bed pretending she doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>“My door is locked,” Pete groans from under the covers. “So close it behind you and don’t come back in.”</p>
<p>Andy, very much inside Pete’s room, flings open the blinds like the hateful creature they are. “We’re going shopping!”</p>
<p>“Go without me.” Pete runs through the chore wheel in her head. It’s not even her <em>turn</em> to help with grocery shopping.</p>
<p>“If I was being a depressed bastard and told you to go without me, would you listen?” Andy sounds quite cheerful as they tear the comforter off Pete’s bed, cruelly baring her to the merciless chill of a Chicago morning. Okay, a Chicago early afternoon. “Because if I’m not mistaken you have a pretty bad track record for fucking off and respecting my depressed wishes.”</p>
<p>If Andy wants the blankets, so be it. Pete pulls a pillow over her face. </p>
<p>She feels Andy’s weight sink into her mattress as they sit beside her, spoiling her sulk like the persistent and evil frenemy they are. “You promised you’d make fun of Josephine with me,” they wheedle. This is worse than grocery shopping at the bodega on the corner, Pete realizes. Andy wants her to go all the way <em>downtown</em>. “And you’re supposed to help me get a record for Pat she doesn’t already have. So you’re just gonna have to reschedule Depression Tuesday. I need my friend today.”</p>
<p>“If I reschedule it won’t be Depression <em>Tuesday</em> anymore, will it,” Pete moans.</p>
<p>Andy plucks the pillow off her head with no remorse. “Sure it will. I’ll write it on the calendar and everything.”</p>
<p>“You are not being very compassionate.” Whatever her other faults are, Pete does at least sit up, now that Andy’s stripped every conceivable comfort off her mattress.</p>
<p>“Nope,” Andy agrees cheerfully. “Now get your ass up.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>An hour later, they’re at the downtown Reckless location, where everyone knows Pat so well Pete just asks the guy at the counter what she’s been looking at lately. She’ll never admit it, but Pete does feel better on her feet and out in the world, even if it’s in dirty jeans with uncombed hair. Andy’s sticking by her like they’re her mental health bodyguard, which pisses her off, but not in a way she has energy to complain about. She doesn’t have energy for much lately. They’ve all just been pretending that’s okay.</p>
<p>“God, doesn’t this time of year just make you want to die,” Pete mumbles to Andy as they pay for two record gift-wrapped in kraft paper. Outside the storefront windows, the sky is opaque grey, a muffling and oppressive weight Pete can feel crushing her down into her thin-soled sneakers. It’s dark even though it’s only 4pm, a devilish type of Chicago weather called ‘too cold to snow,’ and every tree on this whole block is glowing with blue holiday lights. It’s the most horrible time of the year.</p>
<p>Andy indicates with their eyebrows they find this a risky conversational gambit, but that’s their only response. Pete tucks her head into her hood and follows Andy out onto the slushy hell of the half-frozen sidewalk. Even buried in her hoodie pocket, her thin fingers burn from the cold.</p>
<p>“I think Pat’s pretty jazzed about all four of us celebrating Christmas together,” Andy says neutrally as they trudge towards Fields.</p>
<p>“Sometimes she’s young.” Pete says it without judgment. It’s just that sometimes she feels 10,000 years old. Even her own skeleton seems too heavy to lift.</p>
<p>Through the revolving glass doors and suddenly the grand, cavernous entryway of Mashall Fields yawns above them, a gaping thirteen stories of vestibule stuffed with glass overlooks, gold and crystal chandeliers, and absolutely bonkers holiday decorations. There are enough massive Christmas trees, jeweled bobbles, velvet ribbon-wrapped wreaths, and diamantine garlands to make it feel like the actual North Pole in here. Andy lets out a satisfied sigh of wonder, their glasses all fogged, and Pete bites down on whatever Grinchy thing she was going to say—in this case, a comparison between the shapes of Christmas trees and butt plugs.</p>
<p>Like. Fine. It looks nice.</p>
<p>Andy’s grinning like a kid or else a panther as they grab Pete by the wrist. “Let’s go find Jo.” And Pete swallows her vague, twisting dread and goes along with it. Like a normal friend, like a normal person. See? Is that so hard?</p>
<p>Up escalators, through curtains of tinsel and blinding forests of Christmas lights, across departments and, yes, even past the MAC counter. (“Zer is no one named <em>Joe</em> at my countair,” a reed-thin French woman declares with a shudder when they ask.) Andy maintains cheery commentary throughout the elf hunt and Pete doesn’t know how they stand it. If Andy were gripping her any less tightly, she’d slip away on the Home floor and crawl into one of the display beds. But Andy already knows her tricks. Their grip never loosens. </p>
<p>“Petra? Is that you?” Before they find their elf, they’re found instead. Recognizing the voice, Pete tries to duck behind a cubby shelf of perfectly folded luxury towels, but the next words freeze her. “And Andrea!”</p>
<p>Pete pretends she was just tying her shoe and stands up again, taking her part in the phalanx beside Andy. One not-girl is weak, but two are fucking unstoppable. “Hi, Grandma,” Pete says through gritted teeth. Of <em>course</em> her bougie white grandma would be haunting Fields like Jacob Marley two weeks before Christmas. That’s how Pete luck works. That’s what happens when you get out of bed against the universe’s explicit wishes. “It’s just Andy.”</p>
<p>Pete’s grandma always smells incredible, like she just stepped out of a hothouse stuffed with gardenias and dollar bills, and she’s always generous to people on her good side. That’s about the extent of the nice things Pete has to say, though. She’s not a great person, overall; there are about three safe topics to discuss with her without inciting Pete to fight, and even on those topics, she’s likely to be mean and critical. Andy’s gender <em>definitely</em> falls into the fighting category, and Pete’s never sure when Andy wants her to stand up for them vs. hang back and let them go stealth. They need a hand signal for this.</p>
<p>“I’ve just seen your friend Josephine,” Pete’s grandma says, bulldozing on with her devotion to full names in spite of people’s stated preferences. She’s wearing a trendy old lady bomber jacket with a fox fur collar that Pete immediately covets. “First Jewish elf <em>I’ve</em> ever seen—”</p>
<p>“Oops, sorry Grandma, it’s time for us to go,” Pete interrupts as Andy’s fingernails punch through the skin of her wrist.</p>
<p>Grandma Wentz’s nostrils flare. “I didn’t say it was a <em>bad</em> thing!” she protests. “She looks absolutely adorable. Honestly, Petra, you are so <em>sensitive</em>. Andrea, tell her I wasn’t being offensive.”</p>
<p>“My name is <em>Andy</em>,” Andy says firmly. Pete makes a snap decision, interlaces their fingers, and pulls Andy into a run. </p>
<p>“Bye, Grandma! See you at Christmas!” Pete yells as they take off towards kitchenware, not even looking back.</p>
<p>They run like lost boys through the department store, Captain Hook hot on their tail. Pete feels her blood sing for the first time in a week, even lets out a whoop as they run up a down escalator. Finally they collapse, panting, behind a giant floor demo dollhouse.</p>
<p>“Do you think we lost her?” Pete laughs, struggling for breath. Her athletic soccer-playing days are a distant memory for her lungs.</p>
<p>Then she looks at Andy and it takes everything she has not to flinch. Andy’s face is all glowy and shining as they smile at Pete, their cheeks flushed with exertion and eyes warm with hope. Right in this moment, before Pete’s very eyes, Andy is learning the wrong thing. Andy is learning <em>dragging Pete out of bed is a good and helpful thing to do</em>, which is the misinformed conclusion most people draw right before losing all empathy for her forever. It’s a short jaunt to <em>if you just got out of bed you wouldn’t be like this, so it’s your own fault you’re sad</em>, and Pete doesn’t know how to explain to anyone that’s just not how bipolar depression works.</p>
<p>“Do you hear that?” asks Andy, eyes gleaming. “Jingle bells.” Then she’s up and away, sneaking through the toy section towards an unsuspecting Jo. Pete grabs the sweet-faced blond girl doll out of the dollhouse, looks into her flat wood eyes and strokes her yellow yarn braid. Her tiny checked dress has an apron over it, and her mouth is painted as a perfect smile. Pete shoves this idea of a girl into her hoodie pocket, a talisman. A reminder of what everyone who loves her wants her to be.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I literally can’t believe you aren’t happy to see us,” Andy beams, reaching out to tug one of the stray curls escaping from Jo’s elf hat.</p>
<p>Jo smacks their hand away, grumbling, “Fuck off, Babe in Toyland.” She uses her other hand to tug down the bell skirt of her cut li’l humiliating elf dress, which rings her red-and-white striped stockings like a Christmas tree and is trimmed accordingly. It’s at least 5 inches shorter than elf propriety demands, because the patriarchy demands even Santa’s Little Helpers be objectified, and she’s six hours into an eleven hour shift full of screaming children and a lecherous Claus, and she just isn’t up for receiving a feminist critique on her attire.</p>
<p>“Harsh,” Andy pouts.</p>
<p>“First Pete’s grandmother, now this?” Jo snaps. “I believe I told you to fuck off!” She tries to position her body so as much of her outfit as possible is hidden behind a toy display, but Andy just walks around it.</p>
<p>Pete mopes into view down the aisle, and Andy gestures to her sad visage defensively. “Look at this display,” they argue. “I’m trying to get Pete into the Christmas spirit. And who has more spirit than you, Cindy Lou Who?”</p>
<p>Jo glowers ferociously at her so-called friends, but she can’t deny Pete looks kind of… pale and unwashed. She’s been working nonstop at this bullshit job, so she hasn’t been pulling any shifts on Pete Watch. It looks like things have deteriorated.</p>
<p>“So is Pat off somewhere decorating Christmas trees with the help of woodland creatures? Or did she just respect my right to basic human dignity more than you two?” Jo notes how Pete’s face contracts into a frown at the invocation of her girlfriend’s name. A Bad Sign™. </p>
<p>Jo’s irritated, honestly. Not only is she dressed like a goddamn elf right now, but at some point the emotional life of their entire apartment got tangled up with Pete’s mood, and she’s beginning to resent it. Well. She’s fully in the middle of resenting it. She <em>began</em> a year ago. Like, Jo gets sad too! She’s not always jazzed to get out of bed or go to work. She just <em>does it anyway</em>, because that’s what you do. She doesn’t recall anyone ever telling her this stuff was optional—only show up and participate in life if you feel up to it, sweetheart, all your friends will rearrange their lives to take care of you.</p>
<p>Oof. Okay. Too far. Jo eases off the resentment. She’s just scared for Pete, and last year she was scared for Andy, and she just wants everyone to feel happy and proud of their band at the same time. Like, for a month or two, contentment and harmony. Could she have that? <em>Please?</em></p>
<p>“Pat’s making cookies with her mom today,” Pete reports, phasers set to gloom.</p>
<p>“And you didn’t go?” Jo asks.</p>
<p>Pete shoots Andy a killing glare. “I wasn’t going to get out of bed today.”</p>
<p>Jo and Andy have a telepathic consultation about how important this holiday is to Pat and how catastrophic it will be if Pete fucks it up and then enters a shame spiral about fucking up, dragging this calamity through everyone’s Christmas and well into the new year. </p>
<p>“Um,” Jo says, feeling the eyes of her megalomaniac manager upon her. Visitors are 1000% not allowed; she got scolded for this just last week, when Mark’s uninvited ass showed up. “Let’s take a tour of Santa’s Workshop. Maybe we can find the perfect present for Patricia—I hear she’s on the nice list this year…”</p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 1 week til Christmas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>When Pete Says “Maybe we can write a Christmas song together,” Pat’s thinking Mariah, she’s thinking Paul McCartney, she’s thinking love and energy and joy. She’s thinking the lighting of the tree in Times Square, the ice skating rink in Millenium Park, the way the Grinch’s heart grew three sizes that day. She’s thinking Christmas is saved.</p><p>She curls her feet up beneath her on the couch beside the dingy silver Christmas tree Jo used to install in their practice space (i.e., her parents’ garage) each year. It hangs with cracked blue ornaments, half burnt out lights, and gold tinsel garland ragged as a stray cat’s tail. A dented menorah crouches in the windowsill behind it, and the whole living room flashes as the neon lights tacked around the walls pop on and off. Pete’s face pops from pale to pink-and-blue glow, and Pat hardly recognizes her either way. Or—Pat recognizes her all too well, this stormcloud masquerading as her girlfriend.</p><p>“Okay, ideas,” Pat muses. “How do we feel about the Wham! Christmas song? We love it, right? Because we could bridge synth into pop punk, I mean if anyone can pull it off it’s us, and I’d love to learn to program a synth… This feels like one of those things Jo would know how to do, she listens to all that arthouse stuff…” She starts humming, a rock riff that could be passed off as seasonal if they added some background sleigh bells, and grabs for her pen. “Andy will play bells, won’t they?” she asks seriously.</p><p>Pete looks tired and further away than just one couch cushion, but her face is soft with a smile too. “What?” Pat asks, suddenly self-conscious.</p><p>Pete shakes her head. “Just you. I’m basking in how cute my girlfriend is for a minute.”</p><p>Pat burrows close to Pete and the warmth of her oversized hoodie. Outside their little window, sleet falls from the sky, smearing the view into blurred Christmas lights, brownish architectural lumps, and their picturesque alley full of communal dumpsters. “I know how hard you’re trying,” she murmurs, Pete’s arm around her shoulders, face pressed against Pete’s chest. “I’m here for you, you know? Anything I can do, I want to do it, always. But Christmas, like—it really matters to me that we do it together this year. Together-together, I mean, where you’re <em>here with me</em> instead of just showing up with a faraway look and some sardonic comments about capitalism. This is the first time we get to do a holiday <em>our</em> way, with our own traditions… ones that we’ll do for the rest of our lives.” She becomes aware that she’s speechifying, feels her face start to flush. “You probably think it sounds dumb.”</p><p>Pete hides her face in Pat’s hair, kisses her head. “Not dumb. It’s important to me too. I’m just… it’s like, sometimes I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and I’m alone and it’s dark, and there’s so much pressing down on me that I crumple up like a tin can, and I can’t… I can’t feel the things you want me to. Or the things I want me to. I can’t feel anything but... swallowed up.”</p><p>Pat bites her lip. She’s said it before, and Pete never thanks her for it, but… “Do you think maybe you should go back on your meds?”</p><p>Pete stiffens beneath her, her embrace going rigid. She straightens up so Pat can’t lean on her anymore. To show she’s not mad, she strokes her fingers through Pat’s chin length hair, but the moment’s over. The softness is gone. It may as well be sleeting in here now.</p><p>“Don’t worry, Spitfire,” Pete says in a worrying voice. “Everything is under control.”</p><p> </p><p>Sometimes Pete wrecks shit. Like taking nail clippers to your favorite fishnets or melting your best vinyl boots or letting your girlfriend down again and again with the basic failure to feel what you’re meant to feel at the time you’re meant to feel it. Of course she wants to be a cutesy Who from Whoville about this holiday; of course she wants to stop ruining everything with Pat, shattering one moment after another like a woman throwing her wedding china off the roof one plate at a time.</p><p>The thing is Pete never learned how to stop. When she was 16, instead of driver’s ed her parents sent her to therapeutic boarding school, which is like military school but for problems that aren’t illegal so much as they are unbecoming. It was a program designed to turn from her someone who wouldn’t stop having sex with boys she wasn’t interested in, sneaking out to shows and coming home drunk with hickies on her cleavage, shoplifting the type of clothes her mom wouldn’t buy, and punching out the high school bitches who had something to say about it—from herself, basically—into a Jane Austen background character. Somehow this feels the same. Like: no one wants Pete to be doing what she’s doing, feeling what she’s feeling, including Pete.</p><p>But not wanting something has never meant she knew how to stop it.</p><p>Maybe that’s why she passes her lyrics notebook to Pat, knowing perfectly well what’s written in it.  Knowing perfectly well what will happen after that.</p><p>She’s got more than a few exes. More than a few guys older than her who took the advantage she was keen to give away. More than enough to be angry about. Queer love and friendships with girls will save your life, but your life has to be imperiled before it can be saved, doesn’t it?</p><p>Anyway she’s been writing for five days and this is all she’s managed that’s coherent. Her brain just keeps puking up bitterness. It’s not making anyone happy. It’s not what anyone wants.</p><p>They’re at practice, arranged in the dining room they’ve filled with instruments instead of a table and chairs. Jo has announced they’re finalizing the song now, today, or it’s not on the setlist for their Wreck the Halls Christmas eve show. So Pete has no choice but to cough up the notebook, really. Even though Pat’s got that, well, kid on Christmas morning look on her face, and Pete’s passing over a shitty heap of coal. She wants to warn her, or apologize, or be someone else entirely. Instead she says, “If there’s nothing in there we can use, let’s just scrap the idea. We’re not really a Christmas carol type of band anyway.”</p><p>Pat’s been trying to write lyrics with her all week, keeps texting her sweet little similes about snow angels, clearly has something saccharine in mind. Pete almost savors it, the slow-motion way her face falls as she turns page after page of the poison Pete’s written. It hurts so much, it’s a type of perfection. Someone you love finally realizing what a letdown you are, for a second it feels good. Except the second after that you feel like you hit their dog with your car, and the only comfort is you know you deserve to feel like this, so you just keep driving.</p><p>She’s so tired of feeling sad for no reason. She’s so tired of feeling <em>tired</em>. She’s so numb from worrying about everything all the time, it feels like she skipped ahead and read the end of the book. Everything is terrible and always will be, forever, the end.</p><p>See? Here she is in her lovely home, surrounded by her best friends and loving girlfriend and their semi-successful band, and <em>this shit</em> is all she can think about? She’s the world’s biggest asshole.</p><p>A clatter as her notebook lands at her feet. “You might be the world’s biggest asshole,” Pat says, because sometimes they’re psychic like that. The tears in Pat’s eyes reflect the dumb blinking Christmas lights as she grabs her coat from the hook by the door and stalks out of the apartment. Jo and Andy exchange a glance, then lunge for Pete’s notebook. But she’s not trying to hide it from them. She wants everyone to know exactly what she is. She unstraps her bass and wanders toward her bedroom. Laying down is the only thing in the world she’s good at anymore.</p><p> </p><p>“Well, let’s go over the facts,” says Jo. She’s got her investigative frown on. Andy tries to carry on like this is not extremely adorable, because Jo will stop if she finds out. “Exhibit A: these lyrics are certainly upsetting. Exhibit B: they appear to be no more or less upsetting than 90% of our songs. Exhibit C: Patricia is presumably drowning herself in whipped cream at Pick Me Up right now, and Exhibit D: Princess Charming does not appear to be going after her.”</p><p>“Not one of your more complex mysteries, Phine,” Andy says. Jo’s nose crumples in her reflexive scowl, which means Andy’s scored a point in Irritating Nickname Bingo. For the record—not that anyone’s asking—Andy’s not going home for Christmas this year, and they aren’t fabricating an excuse like they did in college, so they’re braced for a major helping of parental wrath. Like Pat, they’re feeling a little fragile from their own expectations for the holiday, and like Pat, they’re feeling a little preemptive disappointment about Pete too. They’re just not acting out their hurt on an apartment-wide scale, out of consideration for its other inhabitants.</p><p>“Solve it for me, then, Hurls,” Jo commands. </p><p>Andy has buried themself under the excess of pillows and pink fuzzy things Jo keeps piled on her bed. They stick Pete’s notebook out from under the heap and use their best declaiming voice to read aloud, “Don’t come home this Christmas. You are the last thing I want to see underneath the tree.” Jo chews her bottom lip, considering, and seems to wait for more. “That’s it,” Andy says. “That’s the whole problem. Case closed.”</p><p>“Well, I get that it’s a shitty song about shitty feelings, but that’s sort of—what we do?”</p><p>Andy shrugs one shoulder. They don’t know how to make it as obvious to Jo, securely loved, parentally supported Jo, as it is to them. “Pete wrote about being angry at some old ex instead of being happy at home with us. That hurt her girlfriend’s feelings. Wouldn’t it hurt yours if Mark did the same?”</p><p>Jo’s shaking her head like McGruff the Crime Dog. “It’s gotta be more complicated than that!”</p><p>Andy shrugs again. “So put some pants on and go find out.”</p><p> </p><p>Jo takes half of Andy’s advice and marches up the block to Pick Me Up Cafe in her fuzzy Hanukkah pajama pants. She finds Pat slumped at a glittery table decoupaged with magazine clippings of women’s legs, a mug the size of a soup bowl in front of her. It’s the Zombie: espresso shots in brew coffee topped with chocolate and caramel sauce, peaked with the contents of an entire can of Redi Whip. If Jo knows Pat, and she does, she’s on her second one, and a stack of praline waffles are on their way.</p><p>Jo flags the attention of Shelby, their favorite waitress, and adds an omelet to the order, then slides into the booth across from her friend.</p><p>Pat looks up slowly, eyes pink and swimming behind the glasses she rarely wears. Her chin is all crumpled and trembly, and Jo figures it probably sucks all over again that the wrong somebody came after her.</p><p>They’ve all been through some hard times with Pete.</p><p>“I kinda came here to be alone,” Pat says to her coffee. Jo steals some whipped cream off the top with her finger.</p><p>“Yeah, me too,” she says, licking the finger clean. “Let’s do it together.”</p><p>Pat looks annoyed, but that’s kind of the point. Friendship is literally just targeted harassment. Anyway, pissy Pat is better at talking about her feelings than mopey Pat, and Jo is happy to help her get there. This is a drama that has played out many times before, usually over a sticky cafe table, usually with whipped cream and/or waffles involved.</p><p>“Seriously, Jo—” Pat starts. Jo dips her hand even deeper into the whipped cream. “Eugh!” Pat jerks her massive coffee out of Jo’s reach so roughly, it sloshes across the table. “You’re such a <em>dick</em>. Can’t you just—ugh!”</p><p>Jo passes Pat several napkins from the dispenser, but she doesn’t apologize. Honey attracts bears; whipped cream attracts girls. These are the risks you take.</p><p>“It seems like things kind of suck in your relationship right now,” Jo observes. Much like a bear, her paws are sticky. She licks cream residue out of her palm creases like a fortune teller with poor boundaries. </p><p>“What relationship,” Pat grumbles, crossing her arms over her chest. “She’s not even sleeping in our room at night. She’s all insomnia in the living room until, like, dawn, and then she sleeps all day or goes to work. Like, I barely even have a girlfriend.”</p><p>Waffles and omelets arrive. Shelby, patron saint of Pick Me Up, gives Pat a carafe of warm syrup and squeezes her shoulder. Shelby has bright pink hair, a ‘one of each’ approach to facial piercings, and the nicest cleavage in Roscoe Park. “If things don’t work out with Pete, sweetie, me and Marigold are adopting you. You are a dynamite woman and the dykes of this city are gonna make a buffet of you.”</p><p>Shelby has been their main source of whipped cream and breakfast food for years, and her girlfriend Marigold is the kind of lesbian with wallet chains and a motorcycle, so you can imagine how hard Pat blushes.</p><p>“A buffet?” she squeaks.</p><p>Shelby winks and says in a stage whisper, “<em>All you can eat.</em>”</p><p>“Selfless defenders of baby gays, that’s what you are,” Jo snorts. Her omelet, cheddar avocado bacon, steams on her plate. “This is a thing of beauty.”</p><p>“Okay, firstly, I object to the term <em>baby gay</em>,” snips Pat. “Secondly? If things don’t work out with Pete, I’m gonna join a convent. Only got one heart to break.”</p><p>“Yeah, but there’s so many ways one girl can break it,” sighs Shleby. “I’ll bring you another Zombie, sweetie, on the house. I saw Jo stick her nasty hands in this one.”</p><p>Jo shrugs and helps herself to Pat’s drink. Pat glares about it, but she’s got a new one coming. Want not, waste not, right?</p><p>“You’d make a shit nun,” Jo tells her. “Maybe you should try having the fight with Pete first.”</p><p>“I’ve had the fight with Pete!” Pat protests around a mouth full of praline waffles. “No amount of, like, talking about my feelings is gonna make her less depressed.”</p><p>“And no amount of depression makes it okay to be a totally shitty partner.” Damn, but Jo’s omelet is <em>perfect</em>. She could live on omelets. She could live on this omelet specifically. “I mean, I don’t always like Mark very much.”</p><p>Pat rolls her eyes. “You think? You guys break up every other day like the miserable poster children for heterseoxuality.”</p><p>“You and Pete might break up sometimes too, if you weren’t U-Hauling so hard.”</p><p>“No, we wouldn’t!”</p><p>“You’d at least, like, argue. You about kill each other when we’re writing songs, don’t you? Usually there’s a blood-curdling brawl and then you storm out of the apartment. My point is, your relationship is tough enough to handle some conflict. And if it’s not, it’s not gonna last anyway, so why drag things out?” Jo fills her mouth with fluffy egg perfection.</p><p>Pat’s shaking her head hard enough to rattle. “I know I sound like a dumb kid when I say it, but I’m never going to feel this way about someone again. Pete’s the rest of my life. Whether she stays with me or not, there’s no one else for me, not really. I can just… feel it. She’s my ribcage, or my wings, or my soul. We only fit together.”</p><p>“Jeez,” says Jo. “But no pressure or anything.”</p><p>Pat’s face says that this is clearly a romantic sentiment, and Jo is being a problem. But Jo’s not convinced. She presses. “Really, though. Doesn’t that seem a little suffocating? Be my one and only? Like, what if it’s not working out, you know? Where does that leave you? Soulmates always seemed a little tyrannical to me.”</p><p>“Our love isn’t <em>tyranny</em>,” Pat snarls, her voice abruptly thick. Jo’s hit some invisible nerve. “I’m not—we can be good for each other again, we just—” </p><p>All of a sudden Pat is crying too hard to speak. Jo leans across the table, stroking Pat’s shoulders with sticky hands. She hopes this is soothing. “I’m sorry, babe. I was throwing words at it like I have all the answers, but I don’t know how to fix anything either. Just—I love you. Andy loves you. Pete loves you, even though she forgets to show it. So it’s stupid for you to be sad at a diner alone. I want to be sad here with you. That’s all.” </p><p>Pat scrubs at the tears on her cheeks, presses her face into Jo’s sleeve, and when Shelby arrives with her new coffee, she’s splotchy and red but not actively crying, which Jo takes as a good sign. Pat’s new drink has caramel and chocolate hearts swirled on top of the whipped cream, and they each carefully lift their soup bowl-sized drinks to clink them in a precarious cheers. It doesn’t heal the hurt Pat’s feeling, doesn’t help Jo understand what it’s like to have a depressed partner or to be in love with someone who’s too sad to love you back, doesn’t get their song written for the show. But it’s cold outside, warm in the cafe. The company’s good and the food is better. By the time they step out into the snow, Pat is smiling again. Despite the windchill, all the way home they feel warm.</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Christmas</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>HAPPY HOLIDAYS, BABES! Couldn't have done 2020 without you. I'll be back next year. xoxo, your local conspiracy shark</p>
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  <a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7yyXIHJIwfnOGwBlPqsRKz">jingle jingle</a>
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<p> </p>
<p>Look, Pete may behave badly, but she’s not stupid. She’s aware that the song did not go over well. She wishes as much as anyone she’d written different lyrics, but instead she’s churning out the same shit she’s been writing since she was 16, and dragging everyone else down with her.</p>
<p>So she’s been working on this secret project, since she can’t sleep at night anyway. It started at Santa’s Workshop, when she stole that doll with the wooden smile a thousand times more genuine than her own. The Santa at Fields was obviously a lech, probably because once HR screened out all the pedos he was all that was left, so no way was Pete going to sit on his lap—not even to embarrass Jo—but it made her think about what she’d ask for, if she thought someone magical was going to bring her happiness in a sack. And she thought she’d ask for a big, bright pink Barbie Dream House, a plastic paradise where she and Pat could live and watch old movies and write songs and love each other and grow old.  </p>
<p>That’s when the Manic Pixie Dream House was born. With cardboard boxes, fabric samples, wallpaper, and paint, she’s been building a dollhouse for Pat in the living room at night. She hides it on the fire escape before she goes to bed. Literally no one goes out there since they discovered the nest of baby opossums out there this summer. Mama opossums, evidently, shit explosively when threatened. The fire escape has basically been unusable ever since.</p>
<p>Except, now the shit’s frozen over, it’s more or less the best hiding place in the house.</p>
<p>She’s using nail polish and modge podge to renovate the furniture from her childhood dollhouse, rescued from her mom’s attic. She’s got one room made up to look like the Pick Me Up, with a table lacquered in comic book cut outs and a glittery red-painted couch that passes as a vinyl booth. Another room is the kind of studio she wishes for Pat, full of instruments (or, in this case, deconstructed Christmas ornaments), black sponge floor-to-ceiling subwoofers and speakers, and pogs she painted silver and gold to symbolize all the certified gold and platinum records Pat is sure to have on her studio walls. Their bedroom is a pop punk paradise, with black velvet walls and a cut up Smiths t-shirt bedspread, a big closet filled with identical pairs of Barbie shoes to symbolize Pat’s out of control sneaker collection. </p>
<p>The part she’s proudest of, though, is the dolls. She gave that blond doll a haircut, traded her apron for drawn-on fishnets, and found a maroon corduroy doll jumper that reminds her of Pat’s favorite dress. The Pete doll, she actually paid for; there was nothing quite right in her mom’s attic and she wasn’t, like, embarking on a life of crime or anything when she shoplifted the first doll, she was just <em>having a moment</em>. Doll-Pete has black hair, a nice even length that Pete fucked up a little with scissors to make it more representative. She smudged eyeliner around its black eyes and crammed orthodontic rubber bands around its wooden wrists for bracelets. A gum wrapper made a shiny silver belt around its miniskirted waist, and Pete painted a Fall Out Boy logo on its t-shirt, because she’s always been their biggest, most diehard fan. She’s working on detachable rooms for the Andy and Jo dolls and she’s actually really proud of it. There’s a real linoleum square in the kitchen, even. She’s been working hard.</p>
<p>She hopes Pat likes it. She may or may not have just sort of… stopped going to her concierge job at Hyatt. She’s pretty sure she only got hired so the night manager could leer at her, anyway. After she walked in on him feeling himself up in the breakroom, she couldn’t think of a reason to go back. Anyway, the point is, she doesn’t have the money for the really nice kind of gift Pat deserves, like a new guitar or the kind of gemstone jewelry that screams <em>someone loves me</em> or the actual moon. </p>
<p>The house is Pete trying to say that she still wants them to live happily ever after and grow into old gay punk rock grandmas, even though she’s sad, that what she wants doesn’t change at all when she’s sad. The house is Pete trying.</p>
<p>She put an entire packet of tissues in their doll bedroom as a kind of joke, like: I know I’ll probably cry a lot in our lives, but it’s not because you don’t make me happy. Some days Pat is all the color Pete sees in the world, and it’s not enough to cure her, but it makes her life something she actually wants to show up for. Since she can’t seem to manage to express that in a song, or in really any of her words or actions lately, she’s saying it like this. She hopes Pat is fluent in dollhouse.</p>
<p>Two a.m. and technically Christmas eve, Pat staggers half-awake into the living room. “Pete? Come to bed,” she murmurs.</p>
<p>Pete throws herself in front of the dollhouse to block it from view, scraps of fabric and scissors and glue and an absurd quantity of glitter in obvious drifts around her feet. She panics: Pat’s seen it and ruined the surprise, the only one she has to offer; Pat’s seen it and Pete will have no specialness to give her; Pat’s seen it and now Pete will let her down.</p>
<p>“What are you doing up?” she barks, frantic. “I need—privacy, okay?”</p>
<p>Pat’s face crumples, apparently just awake enough to be hurt by Pete’s callousness. “Fine,” she snaps, turning on heel and heading back towards their bedroom. “Just wanted to be around you for some reason. Can’t remember why.”</p>
<p>Pete wants to go after her, and would, except everything she thinks of saying is worse than what’s already been said.  She stands there uselessly looking down the empty hall for a long time before she decides the best thing to do is keep working on the dollhouse. Words got her into this mess. They won’t get her out of it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pete sleeps basically until soundcheck, and for once Pat’s glad. The song was a prophecy, maybe: Pete <em>is</em> the last thing she wants to see, under the tree or otherwise. Used to be they’d all get ready for shows together, jostling for mirror space and sharing body glitter whether they meant to or not, but today by unspoken agreement no one wakes up Pete.</p>
<p>Jo does Andy’s eyeliner (“See? I could totally work at MAC”) and Andy contains Jo’s wild hair in two little buns on the back of her head. Pat runs different outfit combinations by them: zip-up mini skirt with oversized black sweater, jingly reindeer sweater and torn jeans, combat boots and velvet leotard with a swirly tulle skirt. Her friends unanimously vote for the latter, and Andy puts product in her hair that makes it look like Courtney Love’s. Jo gives her long gold chain earrings that brush the tops of her shoulders and sprinkles glitter on all three of them, like dusting sugar on cookies. Jo’s completely adorable in overalls, a sheer black knit top, a black 90s choker, and some kind of sorcery that’s made her eyelids silver with spreading glitter like a crown across her brow. Jo and Pat are grinning at each other in the mirror when Andy starts in with the Axe body spray. The girls flee the bathroom shrieking and pretending to choke, caught up in excitement and pre-show nerves. </p>
<p>“Warn a girl before you fumigate her!” hollers Jo, and Pat hangs off her arm, gasping from laughing so hard. Andy sprays an extra blast of Axe into the hallway as punishment, then emerges in the jersey and jeans they wear to all winter shows. They’ve put a battery-powered Christmas light headband on top of their unruly, half-shaved hair. It’s very festive.</p>
<p>Jo links her arm through Pat’s, then Andy’s. “All right, babes. Whose turn is it to wake the beast?”</p>
<p>Pat and Andy stare right back at her. “Pretty obviously yours, JoJo,” says Andy.</p>
<p>Jo looks affronted. “Me? But I went after Pat last time she stormed out!”</p>
<p>“Well I’ve been dealing with 3000% more Pete bullshit than either of you, so it’s not me,” says Pat.</p>
<p>Andy pulls Pat close and kisses her cheek, so now the three of them are a circle of joined arms instead of a chain. “Oh, we know, beautiful. And I’ve been getting her up every single day while Pat’s at work. Jo is shirking. It’s her turn.”</p>
<p>Jo opens her mouth to protest when a quiet voice behind them suggests, “Sounds like maybe it’s my turn to take accountability for my own self, doesn’t it?”</p>
<p>Their huddle breaks as Pat whirls around. There’s Pete in the dark doorway of their bedroom, her greasy hair going every direction, in boxer shorts and Pat’s marching band hoodie from high school, GSHS on the front and STUMP on the back. She’s either got the world’s darkest eye circles or makeup smears so ancient they’re molecularly bonded with her skin, and Pat can smell her breath at five paces. Not even rats would nest in that hair. </p>
<p>Pat’s heart contracts. She loves this woman so fucking much, so enormously, there’s barely room in her for anything else. She knows Pete by muscle memory, even when she’s a stranger. She squeezes Jo’s hand, knocks her hip into Andy’s, and steps away from her friends. Steps towards Pete.</p>
<p>She looks so self-aware and vulnerable, from her scrunched up nose to bony knees. Pat hesitates in front of her, not entirely sure where they stand, if they’re fighting or who’s mad at who. But she is sure it’s Christmas and if they <em>are</em> fighting, she doesn’t want to be. So she reaches out and pierces the invisible barrier between them, grabbing Pete’s hand. “You need glitter and some toothpaste,” she says softly. “And maybe Andy can figure something out with your hair?”</p>
<p>“Yeah?” Pete is cautious, won’t quite meet her eye.</p>
<p>“I have the perfect outfit for you. It’ll work with this effortless grunge-princess thing you’ve got happening!” Jo volunteers brightly.</p>
<p>Pat gives a gentle tug, and slowly, Pete lets herself be led into the bathroom. Pat starts to feel like even if it’s not what she imagined, maybe this kind of holiday can be okay. Like maybe she’d rather spend it imperfect and half-disaster with these girlpeople, with her <em>family</em>, than in some Hallmark movie world where everything goes according to plan.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The song is actually great. Everyone loves it; the pit is singing the chorus back at them by the third verse; Jo’s having a blast. She figures the Christmas Eve show crowd is <em>exactly</em> who their ode to bitterness was written for, and honestly, it’s pretty fun to play. Jo could subsist on this, throwing her joy and rage into the crowd and having it bounced back at her tenfold. She feels incandescent up here.</p>
<p>She dances into Pat territory, dances a tangled web around her with her guitar cord, and wraps them both up like a Christmas tree. They lean back-to-back and shred together, girls more vibrant than the night sky. Pat’s grinning as she shouts the lyrics: <em>one awkward silence, two hopes you cry yourself to sleep staying up, waiting by the phone</em>. Jo spins over to the drum riser and tiptoes along its edge, shimmying her hips and swinging her guitar. Andy flicks drumsticks at her, laughing, and together they yell: <em>and all I want this year is for you to dedicate your last breath to me, before you bury yourself ALIVE</em>. Jo feels herself getting lighter note by note. When she leaps off the riser and into the air, she has every reason to think she’ll float to the ceiling and straight on til sunrise.</p>
<p>Together, they learn all over again how screaming ugly words into a jam-packed room of believers is a way of letting go. Of cleaning unacknowledged wounds. Of allowing yourself, exactly as broken as you are, to be whole.</p>
<p>The stage lights drop as the last notes sound, and they scuttle through the door next to the stage to change for encore. Jo’s grin is mirrored back to her on each face, even Pete’s. A year ago they couldn’t have imagined a show like this, packaged with kids of all genders screaming their songs back at them. They’re not a fuckable opener but the main event, not hometown novelties but girls with a good record slated to make an even better one in the new year. No one is there to see Pete in a short skirt. Or if they are, they’re going to get elbowed and stomped by ten other kids who are there for the words she wrote. It feels better than good. It feels like inheriting what Jo always knew was meant to be hers.</p>
<p>She strips out of her overalls, struggles into her hideous striped elf tights, wipes sweat off her face with her discarded t-shirt. She marvels at their hard work, their tremendous luck, the gift that is the four of them making art together and producing songs that could never sound like anyone else. She marvels at being part of something, being part of each other. It’s not new, this four-as-one, this magic; but it never gets old either.</p>
<p>“It still feels unreal that people are out there screaming for us to do an encore,” Andy says, over the chants and coordinated slamming of boots on the sticky floor that echoes like a summoning spell, calling them back to the stage. They’ve peeled off their sweat-soaked shirt and are going back out in a sports bra and track pants, with a battery-operated string of lights wound around their torso. Its gleam turns their sweat to an ice-slick of glitter. Pete wraps Pat’s skirt in crinkly penguin wrapping paper while Pat pins an oversized bow to her own head. Even Pete has donned a Santa hat, low effort if Jo’s ever seen it, but she’s not about to complain.</p>
<p>Clad in elf dress, elf shoes, elf ears, and elf humiliation, Jo jingles all the way back onstage. The kids packed into the venue scream and cheer, and Jo can’t believe it all over again. Instead of heading to her bass, Pete makes a beeline to the mic stand and pulls a little sprig of mistletoe from her pocket. By the time Pat gets there, the little bundle of red berries, white petals, green leaves is tied to her mic, and Pete stands beside it, hopefully puckered for a theatrical kiss. Pat blushes red as the bow on her head, then kisses her girlfriend sweet and slow while their fans yell some more. Jo looks away, heart uncomfortably full, and smiles down at her guitar. She swipes a low, burbling riff across it, sending a distorted rumble through the room, and Andy does a drumroll on their snare. Pete slips under her bass strap as Andy counts them in, and together, they break into their final song.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pat’s excitement is infectious. They’re all sweaty, smelly, and feeling that familiar bad combo of stale adrenaline jangles and post-show crash. But even so, Andy can’t resist her.</p>
<p>“I still say we should open presents tonight,” Pat says, when all their gear is finally loaded and they’re piling into the van.</p>
<p>Andy yawns hugely, then says, “My family’s probably sitting down to do that right now. And if the deeply joyless Ma and Pa Hurls can do it, what does it say about us if we don’t?”</p>
<p>“What, do they survive on children’s souls instead of sleep? Who opens gifts after one in the morning?” Jo asks crabbily from behind the wheel. Her toe bells jingle when she steps on the clutch, the van shifting reluctantly into gear.</p>
<p>“I cannot describe to you the length of Christmastide Mass. It doesn’t even <em>start</em> til midnight.”</p>
<p>“Temple has the decency to wrap up in an hour. No one’s even late to dinner,” says Jo. The others all groan, recognizing the preamble to one of Jo’s famous superiority-of-the-Jews soapbox speeches.</p>
<p>“If we hide the matzo first, then can we open presents?” Pat interrupts.</p>
<p>“Hannukah’s over,” says Jo, but she’s obviously pleased. “But I guess I’m too tired to sleep anyway. Yeah, let’s do presents.”</p>
<p>That leaves Pete. She’s looking out the window, gaze fixed somewhere between her reflection and the outside world. Andy braces for her to crush Pat’s dreams all over again, begging off because she’s tired or sweaty or the depressive stars haven’t aligned. But Pete’s smeary grey reflection in the dark car window splinters into a smile. “I dunno,” she says, twisting in her seat to look back at Andy and Pat. “It’s only 1:30. Do you think Santa’s had time to leave our presents yet?”</p>
<p>Pat grabs Andy’s hand and squeals. “Hurry, Jo! It’s Christmas!”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Soon they’re gathered around the little Christmas tree, wrapping paper flying. It’s not a lot of gifts, given how broke they all are, but it feels like stumbling upon a treasure trove anyway. Jo gives everyone homemade fruit jam, the jars snug in knitted lace cozies. “Aw, you’re supporting the Amish community!” Andy teases. Jo elbows them in the boob.</p>
<p>“<em>I</em> invented different preserves to match your personalities,” she says. “Habañero peach for Pat’s temper, lemon blueberry for sweet-and-sour Pete, and pickled assholes for my dear Andy.”</p>
<p>“It says artichokes on the jar. Maybe you mislabelled it?”</p>
<p>“I just hope I didn’t make tiny bacterial poison grenades. Because I have at least twenty more jars in my room. Preserves aren’t, like, a small-batch endeavor,” Jo says, balling up wrapping paper and chucking it at Andy’s head.</p>
<p>“Free Botox for your eye crinkles!” Andy cries, ducking just in time.</p>
<p>As for Andy, they scoured the city for records. To Jo, they give a full Sterilite crate of classic rock from an estate sale, battered cardboard encasing original pressings of Three Dog Night and Deep Purple and the beast of Cream. For Pat, it’s Strike Anywhere and Swedish death metal from 1991. To Pete they give a copy of their own first record, the limited press cotton-candy swirl vinyl Fall Out Boy released this year, only Andy’s replaced the sleeve with a collage of photos of the four of them. A mix of low-budget publicity shots, streaked and blurred stage pictures from their earliest basement shows, Polaroids of Pete and Pat curled up together in the backseat, dumb pictures of each other and stupid hotel room pranks from the tour Jo brought disposable cameras on, and embarrassing childhood pictures donated by various family members. Everyone but Pete has signed it, and Andy passes a silver Sharpie to Pete once she’s unwrapped it.</p>
<p>“Super limited edition,” Andy says, “by this band I think you’d really like. Signed copy, too.”</p>
<p>It’s the first time in a long time there have been tears in Pete’s eyes and everyone can tell the reason.</p>
<p>Pat tosses everyone an identical box. Reification by gift: in the boxes are Fall Out Boy shirts, not the low-budget kind they make and sell at shows but screen-printed bowling shirts, pink with blue collars, with their names embroidered at the breast.</p>
<p>“These are hideous,” Jo breathes in wonder, stroking the Pepto-Bismol colored fabric.</p>
<p>“The exact colors of a birth announcement,” Andy agrees.</p>
<p>“We don’t have to wear them if you think they’re dumb,” Pat says in a rush. “But I thought they were kind of… I don’t know… glorious?”</p>
<p>Printed on the back are lady’s hands, one painting the perfect petal-shaped fingernails of the other. It looks like the sign for the beauty parlor your grandma’s been going to since the early 90s. Haloed above the image, <em>Fall Out Boy</em> is in curlicue cursive, with a kiss mark in the place of the final O. </p>
<p>“Two hundred percent glorious,” Pete says reverently. She strips out of her shirt and immediately puts it on. She rubs her fingers over the embroidered letters of her name. “Josephine, do you still have that Bedazzler?”</p>
<p>When it’s Pete’s turn, there’s nothing left under the little tree. The exclamations over good loot die down, and Pat turns down the volume of Jo’s new Bachman Turner Overdrive record. Pete stands awkwardly before them, twisting the hem of her amazing new shirt.</p>
<p>“First I wanted to say—you guys didn’t have to do all this for me. The special Christmas stuff, making me feel like I’m part of something—taking care of me. Um. You don’t have to do all that.”</p>
<p>Andy cups their hands around their mouth and calls, “Funny way to pronounce ‘thank you’!”</p>
<p>Pete ducks her head and smiles. “Yeah, okay, fair. Thank you, guys. I don’t deserve you and I’m never going to give you up.” Pat’s eyes are all misty; Jo and Andy exchange grins, proud to be good friends and grateful to be recognized for it. “The second thing you all should know is I lost my job.” Pete holds up a hand to silence the flurry of supportive noises that erupt. “It’s my own fault for being a miserable bastard. I haven’t gone in—I don’t remember how long. The point is, your gifts—well, they suck.”</p>
<p>Jo raises her hand, waits to be called on. “Hello, yes. I just wanted to say you’re not fired. Andy’s been impersonating your physician. You have mono. You go back on the seventh.”  </p>
<p>Pete gapes at them, temporarily stunned. Her eyes go all glittery with wet refractions of holiday lights. She swallows hard, says gruffly, “Well I didn’t have much money for gifts, is the point.”</p>
<p>“Another nontraditional pronunciation,” Jo says pointedly to Andy.</p>
<p>Pete flips Jo the bird, because yeah, it <em>is</em> hard to say thank you when you really mean it, and starts handing out unwrapped objects. To Jo, she gives the instruction manual for a car stereo. Jo looks puzzled til Pete says, “For the van. I fixed it. Um, the tape that was stuck, I got it out, and reset the internal computer thingie. You can listen to music again while you haul our ungrateful asses around town.”</p>
<p>“That’s a gift for all of us,” Andy says solemnly. They’ve been on radio silence for their last two road trips, which doesn’t make anyone like each other more.</p>
<p>Pete disappears into her room and comes out dragging an extra large trash bag. She leaves it at Andy’s feet, who looks alarmed. “It’s just hand-me-downs,” Pete apologizes. “Everything my brother, my dad, and the Rise Against guys didn’t want anymore. I know you don’t have a lot of clothes you feel comfortable in yet, so I thought something in here might—”</p>
<p>Andy wraps Pete in such a tight hug she can’t get any more words out.</p>
<p>“You smell bad from rewearing clothes all the time,” Pete wheezes, face red with either embarrassment or suffocation. “It’s a selfish gift. I mean, it’s barely a gift, this stuff is basically trash.”</p>
<p>Andy just squeezes tighter.</p>
<p>Jo, of course, is already halfway through the bag. She pulls out a faux-suede jacket with fringe across the back and holds it up in reverence. “<em>Whoa</em>. Andy, put this on right now. It’s a sexy cowboy emergency!”</p>
<p>Andy squeals in delight, releasing Pete in favor of the jacket. With their rib-crushing double sports bra, it fits tight across the chest and looks utterly fabulous. </p>
<p>“See?” Jo beams, snaking an arm around Pete’s waist. “You’re worth taking care of. Even at your worst, you do beautiful shit like this.”</p>
<p>Pete, uncomfortable, slips out from under Jo’s arm. “For my next trick, I need a volunteer from the audience,” she says. Jo throws her hand skyward, so Pete leads her toward the kitchen. “Um—Pat, close your eyes?”</p>
<p>She asks like she has no reason to expect Pat to agree, but you’ve never seen a bigger smile than the one on Pat Stump’s face as she covers her eyes.</p>
<p>A few moments pass. Horrible scrapes and crashes from the kitchen resound. Then Jo’s voice, sounding a bit crushed—“Uh, Hurls? Can I get your muscles on this?”</p>
<p>Pat waits alone on the edge of the couch, face bathed in Christmas lights, feeling like a kid again. In that moment it doesn’t even matter what the present is. Today is perfect.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Pete wakes to the clear, heavy grey light of a snowy morning. Maybe on another day she’d feel gloomy to match, but today at least there is an ember in her heart not reached by the cold. She stretches, arching her back and extending each finger and toe, and is surprised when she runs into something solid. “Oof,” says the lump in the bed. Pete’s so out of the habit of sleeping at the same time Pat does, she forgot what it was like to wake up on a cold morning to someone soft and warm. It makes it less cold, inside and out. Pete remembers, now, she’s never been good at sleeping alone.</p>
<p>Pat rolls into her arms. They fold together like paper dolls, just like they always did. A perfect fit. Pete holds Pat against her chest, breathes in the smell of last night’s sweat and miasma of body spray, and goes back to sleep. There is no need to dream.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Everyone’s rushing, overslept and undergroomed, to get to their respective family gatherings. Andy’s on their way to a punk collective anti-Yuletide; Jo’s in a pressed button down shirt and a dark blue sweater with her gold Star of David necklace winking proudly; Pete’s hopping into tights with a comb halfway through her hair, needing to make the circuit of both Stump and Wentz holidays and already late; and Pat is sitting in the living room in her pajamas, playing with her dollhouse.</p>
<p>Pete kisses her on the cheek and hands her a toothbrush. “Seriously, babe, we have to go.”</p>
<p>“Don’t rush me,” Pat says, sticking the toothbrush in her mouth and otherwise ignoring it. “Santa brought me a cool toy.”</p>
<p>“Santa didn’t do shit,” Pete says. “But I bet your mom will formally petition to get me on the naughty list if we’re late to the second holiday in a row.”</p>
<p>Pat grins up at her, hair askew with a smudge of toothpaste drool starting at the corner of her mouth. She winks lecherously. “Yeah, but we were late to Thanksgiving for a <em>good</em> reason,” she says around the toothbrush. Her toothpaste drool doubles in size.</p>
<p>“You could not be any sexier,” Pete laughs in spite of herself. She feels—well, somewhere on the road to happy, maybe? She <em>feels</em>, like, at all, and that is worth celebrating.</p>
<p>Encouraged, Pat lunges for her, and smashes a truly disgusting kiss across her face, ruining the makeup she has painstakingly applied. Pete shrieks, tries to escape. Pat laughs, takes her toothbrush from her mouth, and says, “You know, I’d rather be taking your clothes off than putting mine on…”</p>
<p>“Under no circumstances!” protests Pete. Pat pouts, somehow alluring in her oversized Pete’s t-shirt and sweatpants, and Pete relents. “Okay, actually, here’s a circumstance: if we get to your parents’ holiday thing on time, later tonight at my grandma’s, we can barricade ourselves in the bathroom and see if we can’t both get on the naughty list.”</p>
<p>“Don’t take this Santa thing too far, perv,” Pat cackles, delighted. “Promise?” </p>
<p>“Promise,” Pete nods, pleased to find she actually means it. Also: she can’t think of a better punishment for her not-so-secretly homophobic grandmother. </p>
<p>Just like that, Pat’s off running, dragging Pete toward the bathroom so hard she nearly falls over. “C’mon, slowpoke!” she hollers, way too excited for any human being before 10am. “Let’s go celebrate Christmas!”</p>
<p>As she runs, Pat starts singing <em>deck the halls with lots of orgasms</em> like the wild Christmas dork she turned out to be. Pete lets herself be dragged along. Like, even if she can’t feel the joy Pat’s feeling, that isn’t the same as misery, right? Feeling lonely isn’t the same as being alone. And Pete isn’t.</p>
<p>They all pile into Jo’s van while she grumbles it’s not a sleigh. They drop Andy at an El station and Jo hauls them all the way out to Glenview. They are not on time, but Pat’s so fucking cute with her disgusting excess of holiday cheer, Pete plans to unwrap her like a present anyway. </p>
<p>Basically, it’s a surprisingly merry Christmas to all, and to all a <em>very</em> good night.</p>
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